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Thread: Mid-Wales

  1. #1
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    Mid-Wales

    My first trip report!

    This could possibly go in the bikepacking forum but it's a trip report so I'm sticking it here.

    This year has been odd to say the least. One of the things I had planned for the first May public holiday weekend here in the UK was to attend the WRT (Welsh Ride Thing). Think along the lines of a mountain biking group hang but a bit weird. Normally on the Saturday about 150 or so mountain bikers would arrive in a field near the organiser's house having previously been sent a list of locations that they might want to visit in the area and work out a route based on them. Or not. After a lot of tea being drunk and random prizes being given out we are told, politely, to go forth and ride and only come back sometime on the Monday. Where you went, where you slept was up to you.

    That thing and another led to the event being postponed, then Stu the organiser decided that the event would go ahead this last weekend rather than everyone meet up at his he'd send out the Grid References (map locations/points of interest), we could park anywhere in the area we wanted (except near his house) and at some point over the weekend we had to visit him for tea and cakes and pick up our event t-shirt.

    So that's the background. I also decided that since I'd now got an underquilt to go along with my hammock that my bivvies would be hammock based. A slight problem, well two. Normally when riding around I'd be on the lookout for potential bivy spots but these have always been ground based so I'd no idea where in the area (we are talking something 30 x 50 miles here) might be suitable, there's lots of woods so no problem there except for problem number two, my wife. OK, not my wife, but the fact that she'd be bivvying ground based so we had to find locations that were suitable for both. Not easy in mid-Wales since most of the woodland is on steep sided slopes or the ground is marshy. A bit of internet search found a possible location for the first night and I'd a reasonable idea from my memory bank for the second. But just to be on the safe side I'd take kit that would let me sleep on the ground as well, basically an inflatable mat, lightweight bivy bag and a pole.

    This is what the woods (commercial forestry) typically look like (not my shot BTW but someone else riding the WRT this weekend):



    not good for ground dwelling

    Oh, there was a third problem: carrying the kit on the bike. Then I remembered I'd a Revelate Saltyroll https://www.revelatedesigns.com/inde...ebar/Saltyroll , roughly 15 litres capacity, a test showed I could get all of my proposed bivy kit into it. My hammock kit was: homemade 3.3m (11ft) hammock, Cumulus Selva 250 underquilt (rated to -4C), Cumulus 150 quilt (rated to 4C), Alpkit Rig7 tarp - this is 2.7 x 2.4 metres which I was using as a diamond tarp so about 3.6m (12ft) along the diagonal. This plus the ground kit came to a tad under 3kg.

    The weekend forecast was for no rain, a northerly breeze/wind and overnight lows of 5C. Sort of ideal really as it lets me work into getting a system sorted without also having to worry about strong winds or rain, those can come later.

    While mid-Wales might not have many big hills it does have a lot of little ones and they are steep, if you aren't heading down a steep hillside you are heading up one! And 25% or 1 in 4 grades aren't uncommon.

    By early evening we are nowhere near my speculative site so we spend ten to fifteen minutes at several locations looking for something suitable but everything is on a steep slope or soaking from the recent rains. Eventually my wife asks how far is the proposed spot via the shortest route - "about 15km", "Let's go there." It's just going dark as we arrive. Result! Lots of flat areas for tents/tarps/ground and there's decent sized trees for me to hang. I end up using two oak trees that were also sheltered from the northerly wind.



    I had a nice comfy night, one nature break at about 1:30 and then it was getting light at 5am or so.

    More riding on the Sunday with a visit to the organiser's house where he gave us a tip for a bivy spot for the night. This turned out to be pretty good. Even though it was only 20 metres from the road and fairly open we were almost completely out of sight (just as well given the "no camping" sign on the other side of the road!), even the farmer in the morning didn't spot us. I didn't get as good a hang this time, partly due to the uneven ground - there was a ridge about a third of the way between the two trees, so my underquilt ended up brushing the top of the grass! I also had head and foot ends of the hammock about level which meant I was a bit too far to the foot end. Lifting the tree strap at that end would probably have dealt with both issues but there were a lot of small branches in the way. Had a good kip though - my wife claimed I was snoring!



    My wife with her SMD Gatewood Cape in the background. In the morning she had lots of condensation whereas I had none - purely a result of her being in the open and me under the trees - shows how localised such things can be. Not so nice was the bird that pooped on my tarp - if it had only moved six inches along the branch it would have missed

    The following morning was a short ride back to the car then a drive home in the holiday traffic.

    The tarp https://alpkit.com/collections/tarps/products/rig-7 probably isn't ideal for hammocking - but then it wasn't designed with that in mind - I was lying there in the morning trying to figure out ways to improve it, I think I've found a way to attach internal pole mods. It's also rather heavy for the amount of protection, with a reasonable but still modest set of lines it's 670g (a Warbonnet Mountainfly is around 450g by way of comparison).

    So learnt a few things, enjoyed myself, it didn't rain all weekend. Can't be bad.
    Better weight than wisdom, a traveller cannot carry - Viking proverb

  2. #2
    Phantom Grappler's Avatar
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    Fantastic trip Bob-W, beautiful countryside. Y’all’s loose-knit group and tea at organizer’s house is interesting.
    I’m half Welsh from Hughes and Davis families.
    When you can set your rig in the dark, you are a real hammock camper.
    Thanks for sharing.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Phantom Grappler View Post
    Fantastic trip Bob-W, beautiful countryside. Y’all’s loose-knit group and tea at organizer’s house is interesting.
    I’m half Welsh from Hughes and Davis families.
    When you can set your rig in the dark, you are a real hammock camper.
    Thanks for sharing.
    When I said "house" I didn't mean his actual house - getting 150 people in there would be a bit of a squeeze at the best of times He'd put up a couple of those mini-gazebo/awning type things and some benches in the yard out front so you turned up, made yourself a cup of tea or coffee from the hot water urn, grabbed a slice of cake and had a chat with him or whoever was there (only a handful when we arrived) then went on your way. A big enough area to keep distanced.
    Better weight than wisdom, a traveller cannot carry - Viking proverb

  4. #4
    Senior Member ofuros's Avatar
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    Nice one, Bob-W.
    Strange meet in strange times...
    Last edited by ofuros; 09-02-2020 at 00:49.
    Mountain views are good for the soul....& getting to them is good for my waistline.

    https://ofuros.exposure.co/

  5. #5
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    Cool to read about a different kind of trip in a unique area! Thanks for sharing

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